


Won't Wave My White Flag

by cheshire_carroll



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, Dimension Travel, F/M, Female Tony Stark, M/M, Multi, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Clint Friendly, Not Natasha Romanov Friendly, Not Spider-Man: Homecoming Compliant, Not Steve Friendly, Not Steve Rogers though, Not Wanda Friendly, Possible Character Redemption, Selfcest, Team Tony Stark, The Man In The High Castle fusion, The Man In The High Castle inspired, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Wakanda Critical, not SHIELD friendly, twincest (sort of)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-08-19 22:19:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16543376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheshire_carroll/pseuds/cheshire_carroll
Summary: Inspired by ‘The Man In The High Castle’:Antonia “Tonia” Stark was born and raised in a dystopian America dominated by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan following the World War II defeat of the Allied powers until a deadly secret forces her to use the Tesseract in a last-ditch attempt to escape.Anthony “Tony” Stark is finally starting to move on from the aftermath of the ‘uncivil’ war when FRIDAY alerts him that she’s detected traces of Tesseract-energy in New York, but what he finds isn’t the beginning of an alien invasion, no; it’s something much, much more intriguing.A chance for true understanding and acceptance is a gift beyond either Tonia or Tony's imaginings, one that leads them down a path neither expected even as the danger of an impending invasion, the potential return of the Rogues and the dark shadow of Tonia’s universe haunt their footsteps, threatening their new, fragile hope for a chance at real happiness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is firmly Team Iron Man and highly Team Captain America critical, if you have a problem with that then don't read it and don't leave stupid trolling comments that will be deleted with extreme prejudice. 
> 
> Thank you.

**Won't Wave My White Flag**

 

_CHAPTER ONE:_

Tonia Stark panted raggedly, one hand pressed against her shoulder where she could feel the wet, slimy heat of her own blood. "No," she choked out, "no, no— _Winter_!" Tears burned her eyes, momentarily blinding her. Blinking them away revealed the same scene as before; a massacre. Mass-shootings were something she was grimly familiar with, having grown up in the Greater Nazi Reich, but seeing Winter bleeding out on the ground, the bullets having pierced his body armour...

' _I designed that gun_ ,' she thought, numbly.

Designing a gun, even one with body-armour piercing rounds, had seemed a better choice than a missile, or a bomb— less mass-casualties, she'd thought. Less blood on her hands.

But not no blood. Her hands were drenched with her own blood, after all, after she'd been shot by her own gun, and Winter's blood was pooling out around him alarmingly fast. She staggered forwards, dropping to her knees beside her lover. His face was already pale from blood loss, and his chest was still moving slightly.

"Winter?" she asked, her voice trembling.

"T-Tonia," he rasped back, pale lavender eyelids fluttering open to reveal the stormy grey beneath that she knew so well. "Wh-what— why are you still here?"

"I can't just leave you," she snapped, her voice rising up in her hysteria, and he made a soft growling sound.

"You have to leave! You have to go, before they send more people— this is your chance, _schatz_! Don't waste it! You cannot let them catch you!"

" _Schmusebärchen—_ " the ridiculous nickname she'd so fondly given him sounded more like a sob, and Winter interrupted her.

"Don't let my death be wasted!" He demanded roughly. "Don't let all our efforts be for nothing! _Go_!"

"Winter—" she started to say, but Winter interrupted again.

"No! Not— not 'Winter'. James."

Tonia's eyes widened. "James," she whispered, reverently, her hands moving to cradle his face. His skin felt cold to touch. "James. James. I love you, James."

"Tonia," he whispered back. "I love you too. Now go!"

She tore herself away from Wint— from _James_ , staggering to her feet. Her hands shook as she typed in the passcode and she left blood smears on the hacked finger-print scanner, but the door swung open and she was immediately basked in the blue light of the Tesseract.

She didn't waste any more time as she rushed into the room, over to the computer terminals where her fingers flew over the keyboard, inputting the precious data— her program was set to self-destruct after a single use; there would only be one chance at this. 

The sudden sound of boots thudding against the ground told her she was out of time and she typed in the final string of coding with a hard, vicious grin on her face, before turning to face the doorway she'd left open.

"Put your hands in the air!" one of the soldiers demanded and she did as ordered, lifting her arms up high above her head.

"You're too late, boys," she said mockingly, grin widening as Wolfgang Strucker pushed to the front, a dark scowl on his face. "Better luck in the next life, Wolfie— PEGGY, do it!"

"Program U-76238 activated," a crisp, female British voice issued from the computer terminal.

"Stop her!" Wolfgang shouted as the Tesseract's glow immediately began to intensify. Tonia could feel the pressure in the air build and build and she tipped back her head and laughed, the sound verging on hysterical. Months of planning, this had taken months of planning, and the price she'd had to pay was heartbreaking— but she was actually succeeding.

The last she saw of her world was Wolfgang's furious, terrified face— and then her vision was consumed by blue, while in her wake her program self-destructed, triggering an explosion that consumed the entire scientific-research facility.

+

"Boss," FRIDAY interrupted his working through the paperwork Pepper had sent him, "I've got bad news."

"Tell me something new," Tony Stark said with a groan, rolling his eyes as he leaned back in his office chair, wondering why he still had to deal with so much SI crap when he wasn't even CEO anymore.

"Banging your head against a wall for one hour burns approximately one hundred and fifty calories," FRIDAY offered and Tony couldn't help his snort.

"Good one, baby girl," he praised and he could practically feel FRIDAY's pride as the lights in the room briefly flickered pink.

It had taken a fucking so-called 'civil war' amongst the back-stabbers he'd called his team-mates for him to take the training wheels off FRIDAY and actually let her free to grow the way JARVIS had been allowed to, and his only regret was that he hadn't done it sooner. She'd deserved better than his fear following the whole Ultron debacle, and she'd been the one to save his life when Rogers, Barnes and the Wakandan king had abandoned him in a fucking HYDRA base in Siberia, hacking her own protocols in order to override them and send for help.

"Thanks Boss!" FRIDAY chirped. "But I've still got the bad news for you."

"Alright," he sighed, "hit me."

"One of the programs you installed for me to keep watch on is sending off an alert," FRIDAY told him, "the program that tracks Tesseract energy."

"Shit," Tony said, frowning. "Are we talking Tesseract-enhanced weapons, here?"

"No Boss," FRIDAY said, her voice slightly rushed as if she was trying to pull off the band-aid quickly, "we're talking wormholes."

And Tony's blood went cold.

"FRIDAY, get the suit!"

+

Tonia hit the ground with a thud and a wheeze. Her injured shoulder screamed in protest and she let out several curses in a combination of German, Italian and Japanese— it was a habit she'd picked up when she was younger to piss off Howard that she'd never quite grown out of.

Stumbling back to her feet, her hand pressed against where the bullet had clipped her— and thank god it hadn't actually hit her directly; she'd designed those bullets to expand on impact, her entire shoulder would have been reduced to shredded mincemeat— she looked around at her surroundings, discovering that she seemed to be in the middle of some kind of museum exhibit. All around her, people were shouting and pointing devices at her that she thought were cell phones, though not like any she'd seen before. Considering the lack of guns, Tonia ignored them and continued looking around for some sort of indicator about where she was– and then she spotted it. There was a sign on the wall, mostly information about the exhibit she'd just crashed into the middle of, but at the bottom of the sign, in all capital letters, were the words ' _Smithsonian Institution Building_ '.

Tonia had hacked enough government files to know that the Hydra Institution of Scientific Knowledge And Research building she worked at, the one that had held the Tesseract, obviously hadn't always gone by that name—before the Axis powers had won World War II, her workplace had been called the Smithsonian Institution Building, and instead of containing only laboratory and research space, plus the apartment for the head of HYDRA, it had boasted galleries, museum space, archives and even a library.

It had _worked_ — her plan, her mad, mad plan, had _worked_ ; she'd actually succeeded in using the Tesseract to open a wormhole into another universe, a universe where the Allied powers hadn't lost, where Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany weren't the competing super-powers of the world, where the United States of America hadn't been divided between the Germans and Japanese into the Greater Nazi Reich and the Japanese Pacific States following the 1947 surrender of the U.S. and remaining Allies, leaving its people to live under the rule of totalitarian regimes. 

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat and Tonia failed completely in holding it back and not sounding like a complete madwoman in front of all the people still staring at her. She then brought the hand not applying pressure to her bleeding shoulder up to her face and started to cry, great big ugly sobs that tore viciously through her, too overwhelmed to care about the audience, or wonder why none of the security guards she'd seen had approached her.

It was a strange whining noise that finally prompted her to look up, vaguely noting as she did that at some point during her crying fit the large room had been cleared out of all the onlookers before focusing her attention on the two... people?... hovering in the air.

One of them appeared to be some sort of sleek, humanoid robot coloured a shiny red and gold with a glowing bright-blue triangle in the centre of its chest-plate that reminded her of the shine of the Tesseract. The other looked almost human, except for the fact its(his?) skin was red and its eyes were a startling yellow. It was wearing tight blue body-armour and a red cape and was fucking _floating_ without any sort of machinery to power its flight like the robot had.

The second one, the one with the red skin, reminded her of Johann. Nothing about their facial features looked alike; Johann's face had looked more like a skull with the skin all melted— there _was_ a reason he was commonly known as Red Skull— while the... _being_... had a very human-looking face, other than the colour and consistency of its skin and its eye-colour.

"Identify yourself," the robot(?) ordered, its voice gravely and automated and one gauntlet raised and pointed in her direction with the palm glowing bright Tesseract-blue.

"You first," Tonia immediately countered, fully aware that she was at the disadvantage but having no intention whatsoever of showing it.

"You are unaware of who we are?" the being asked, its voice very British in a way that made her think of her PEGGY, her poor, precious A.I. who she'd had to leave behind, and who had protocols in place that would unwrite her code so that the government could never get their filthy hands on her.

"I've never seen or heard of either of you before in my life," Tonia answered the being honestly. The being and the robot exchanged looks, before the being floated forwards slightly.

"I am The Vision," it introduced itself. "And this is Iron Man. We are members of the Avengers, a team of Earth's mightiest super-heroes."

"Super-heroes," Tonia repeated, her mind whirring, unable to help the incredulous expression on her face.

"You haven't heard of the Avengers?" Iron Man asked, sounding just as incredulous. Tonia shook her head slowly.

"No... the Avengers don't exist where I'm from." She told them.

"And just where are you from?" Iron Man demanded.

"It's going to sound crazy," Tonia warned, "and completely unbelievable."

"We've got a pretty good handle on unbelievable," Iron Man said, waving his (if he was called Iron _Man_ , then she was pretty confident in using male pronouns) gauntlet—the one not pointed threateningly at her— in the direction of The Vision, "considering Vision here is an android."

Tonia took a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of an artefact called the 'Tesseract'—"

"We have," Iron Man interrupted and she nodded again.

"That's... good, I guess. Makes it easier. Well, the Tesseract is capable of creating wormholes, and I... there's no easy way to put this, but multiverse theory? It's true. I'm from a different universe, and I used the Tesseract to create a wormhole from my universe to this one."

Much to Tonia's relief, neither Iron Man or The Vision were looking at her like she was a lunatic. Well, it was a bit hard to tell with Iron Man, considering the lack of facial features, but The Vision looked more curious than sceptical, and the android already seemed less cautious of her.

"Why did you create a wormhole to our universe?" It asked and Tonia swallowed roughly.

"I... I'm seeking asylum, I guess." She said.

"You guess?" Iron Man repeated flatly and Tonia lifted her chin up, squaring her shoulders, ignoring the sharp slice of pain from the injured one.

"My name is Antonia Stark," she said, her voice strong and steady, "and I _am_ seeking asylum in your universe from my own."

That definitely got a reaction from them both. The Vision's face twitched to something resembling shock and Iron Man landed suddenly on the ground with a heavy thud, before he proceeded to then stride forward until he was less than a meter from her. It took all of Tonia's self-control not to step back from him, then the robot's face-plate abruptly slid up and the instinct to retreat vanished as she found herself staring at a bizarrely familiar face.

"Hi Antonia Stark," the man in the robot-suit-thing said, his voice smooth and intense and his dark brown eyes boring straight into her own dark brown eyes, "I'm Anthony Stark."

Tonia just _stared_ for a stretched-out moment of silence where none of them seemed quite sure what to say. Her eyes flickered over what was visible of Anthony Stark, picking out familiar features as her mind whirred. She didn't think she'd expected to meet another version of _her_ ; why would Howard Stark meet and marry Maria Carbonell, an _Italian_ , if the Allied powers had won? He'd _hated_ Italians, and had hated her mother— why would he have ever married her if it wasn't to improve his social status in a world where Americans were considered second-class citizens?

It didn't make sense to her at all, it wasn't something she'd ever factored in to any of her plans, which was why all she could think to say was, "I actually go by Tonia."

And, to her surprise, Iron Man, Anthony Stark, started laughing.

+

Tony had known there was something familiar about the woman from the moment he laid eyes on her in the security footage FRIDAY had hacked the Smithsonian for while they were en route. He'd actually had the brief thought that she looked like his mother before violently pushing it away, Maria Stark a much too raw memory after Siberia.

The woman was short and slight, her skin tanned dark enough to be considered olive-toned, and her long, black hair pulled strictly back in a harsh braid that fell nearly to her hips. She was dressed in a grey uniform of some sort paired with knee-high black leather boots, but blood from a shoulder wound hid any sort of identifiable insignia.

She looked exhausted, in pain and had grief carved deep into her thin, tear-streaked face. Despite the soul-deep terror he felt at the very thought of a wormhole, especially a Tesseract-created wormhole, his first, immediate and surprising instinct was that she wasn't a threat.

And then she'd opened her mouth and nothing she'd said made sense until she bluntly admitted she was from a different universe. Everything had started to click into place in his head even before she'd visibly steeled herself, holding her chin high and proud despite her current state and introduced herself.

At least her reaction to his own introduction had seemed to blow her mind as much as her existence blew his, and then when she'd blurted out, "I actually go by Tonia," well, it was so familiar that all he could do was laugh.

Officially, he couldn't believe her yet, not until they'd run tests and interrogated her, but unofficially, there wasn't a doubt in his mind that Tonia Stark was exactly who she said she was: him. Just... hotter, and with tits.

+

+

_Schatzi = treasure (German)_

_Schmusebärchen = little cuddle bear (German)_

_Note- in this story, the Winter Soldier is German, not Russian, due to the success of Operation Barbarossa (the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union), hence the German nicknames, not Russian ones._


	2. Chapter 2

**Won't Wave My White Flag**

 

_CHAPTER TWO:_

Despite believing her— actually, more like _because_ he believed her— Tony searched Antonia 'Tonia' Stark for anything that could possibly be used as a weapon while Vision checked over her shoulder, examining how bad the injury was. Despite how much blood was on her, the wound wasn't serious, he reported, which brought Tony to one unhappy conclusion.

After getting FRIDAY to ping Happy, he turned back to Tonia, who was sitting down on a chair Vision had fetched for her. She looked exhausted and hollowed out, like she'd already cried all the tears she had left. She'd pulled her knees up to her chest and was hugging them with her good arm.

"So," he said bluntly, not bothering with any sugar-coating, "the blood's not all yours."

Tonia didn't try to deny it, shaking her head as she looked up at him with dull eyes. "There was some resistance to my escape." She said in an emotionless voice.

"You know how to fight, then," he observed and her mouth twisted into a tired smile.

"Yeah, Aunt Peggy taught me. And then... then my partner taught me some more."

"Partner?" He asked, despite already having a good idea about the fate of the partner— if Tonia was anything like him, she'd die before leaving her loved ones behind in a hostile situation. Sure enough, Tonia's face crumpled.

"The rest of the blood." She whispered.

Tony winced.

"You have our sympathies, Ms Stark," Vision said with his careful gentleness. Tonia just nodded and bowed her head down again, resting it on her knees.

FRIDAY notified him when the car arrived— just twenty minutes, Happy must have been speeding. "Hey," he said, softening his voice. "Time to go."

Tonia lifted her head and blinked sluggishly at him. "Time to go," she echoed, seemingly to herself. Vision went ahead to clear a path for them, making sure none of the Smithsonian employees were lined up to gape at Tonia like she was on parade as he led her through to one of the back exits that led on to an employee's car park.

The windows of the car were tinted as he shepherded Tonia into it, waving Vision off to go ahead. She seemed much more awake and less dazed as the car started moving, looking around its interior with wide, fascinated eyes and then out the window, back at the Smithsonian.

"It looks so different," she breathed, true awe on her familiar face.

"Different?" He asked, curiously, and she nodded absently, still staring.

"There's no flag."

"No flag?" He repeated, and Tonia actually flinched, hunching into herself.

"Their flags are everywhere," she told him quietly. "They're smug, arrogant bastards who still want to rub it into our faces, even nearly seventy years later."

Tony did the math in his head and blanched at the implications, his stomach rapidly sinking somewhere down past his feet. "Fuck." He breathed. " _Fuck_. Please tell me it's not what I think it is."

"In 1947," Tonia said flatly, her hands clenching on her lap, "the United States of America and remaining Allied powers surrendered to the Axis powers, ending the Second World War."

"Fuck," Tony repeated, staring at Tonia with open horror.

"America was split between the Germans and Japanese," Tonia continued, her voice still flat, her eyes bleak. "The former Western United States are now known as the Japanese Pacific States and the former Eastern United States are the Greater Nazi Reich."

It was rare that Tony was lost for words, but this was one of those times. Staring at Tonia, his brain struggled to comprehend the sort of dystopian universe that Tonia had been born to.

"What about Italy?" He finally asked— the Italians had been an original part of the Tripartite Pact, the alliance that had formally taken the name 'Axis Powers'.

"The Nazis helped Italy conquer most of Africa," Tonia answered softly. "After the war, all the more fortunate African Americans in the Greater Nazi Reich were deported to Africa. The unlucky ones were sent to... camps. They didn't come back."

Tony had to close his eyes, feeling horribly nauseous. "What about Wakanda?" He asked hoarsely. "They're the most technologically advanced nation in our universe—" though, of course, _Tony_ wasn't a nation; something which the ex-Avengers seemed to have forgotten and the Wakandan king was too arrogant to consider— "and they never participated in the Second World War." Or any of the conflicts afflicting their neighbours in the years prior and post World War II, be it invasions, famine, epidemics, civil wars, or poverty.

"Apparently the invading armies did get a shock," Tonia admitted, "but for all its advances, Wakanda was defenceless against atomic bombs."

"Fucking _hell_ ," Tony shuddered with horror— he may not like Wakanda, but _nobody_ deserved that.

"Wakanda is uninhabitable now," Tonia continued quietly and Tony bowed his head for a minute.

"Japan and Germany, they're the super-powers, then?" he finally asked.

"They are," Tonia confirmed. "The Japanese Empire controls the entirety of the Pacific Ocean and most of the Asian continent, including China and India, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, all Pacific states of the USA, and the Yucatán Peninsula. The German Empire controls all of Europe, the Middle East, and the Eastern United States. The South American countries, Canada and the former USSR are split between the Japanese and German Empire."

"What a fucking nightmare," Tony muttered, shaking his head again in a sort of horrified disbelief.

"Welcome to my universe," Tonia said with a grim smile, before her attention was captured once more by their surroundings. There was a sort of innocent wonder in her damp eyes as she stared out the car window. "It's all so different," she breathed, her breath actually catching as they passed an idly fluttering flag hanging by the awnings of a burger shop. "Oh my god," she whispered, all choked up and actually reaching out towards it, her palm pressing against the window of the car. "I— I've never seen the United States of America flag outside of my hacking, or the American Resistance to the Nazi Reich."

Tony blanched. "They replaced our flag?" He demanded and Tonia nodded, still staring in broken disbelief and wonder, and all Tony could do was close his eyes and remind himself that the Allies had won the war, that they had won.

+

Tonia couldn't help but stare. So many American flags flying high and proud; she couldn't help but flinch at the sight of every flag, knowing that if anyone had dared display a U.S.A. flag in her universe they'd have been shot on the spot. She kept tensing up in preparation for violence, before reminding herself that this America, its people were _free_ — it felt like she was in some sort of utopian fairy-tale. It was too unbelievable, far too good, too wondrous, to be true.

Her counterpart, Anthony Stark— or 'Tony', as he'd told her to call him— looked sick as he processed the reality of her universe in the seat beside her. She'd think he was an idiot for trusting her word so easily, but when she looked at him, there was just _something_ present, some unspoken connection that felt as natural as breathing (she half expected their hearts to be beating the same rhythm, for each natural inhale, exhale to match). He was her, and she was him. It was an undeniable truth. If Tony Stark was an idiot for trusting her as much as he seemed to, she trusted him just as much so she must be an idiot too.

Still, he'd been cautious enough to strip her of anything that could be considered a weapon, including the 'string' she'd had wrapped around her wrist that was actually a length of vibranium so thin that it had been threaded through a piece of cotton and served as an emergency garotte or restraint.

Tony took her to a skyscraper building that had an incredibly futuristic design, nothing like the traditional style of architecture favoured by the Greater Nazi Reich, and The Vision, who had flown ahead, was waiting for them. As Tony escorted her inside, Tonia noted wryly that the reception was empty and she was directed straight to an elevator, with no chance to look around. She didn't really mind though, not when the elevator stopped at a floor that was clearly some kind of medical wing— she'd never complain, she'd been taught better, but the pain in her shoulder had been getting worse.

A beautiful Asian woman wearing an oriental-style sleek, high-collared white dress with her long dark hair piled up on top of her head in a twist was waiting for them there in the medical wing. "This," Tony introduced, giving the woman a warm smile, "is the brilliant Doctor Helen Cho, a world-renowned geneticist who's currently lending us her invaluable expertise in the squishy sciences."

"In return for very generous funding for my research projects," Doctor Cho clarified, but her voice was as warm as Tony's smile.

Doctor Cho clearly wasn't Japanese and Tonia felt resigned as she wondered just what the apparently brilliant woman's fate had been in her universe— as part of the Japanese Empire but not being Japanese herself, Tonia highly doubted Doctor Cho would have been allowed to get an education as a nurse, let alone any kind of doctorate.

"Helen," Tony continued, "this is Antonia, though she prefers to go by Tonia."

Doctor Cho's eyes immediately lit up with curiosity, and Tonia could see the sharp gleam of intelligence shining in them. She didn't doubt for a moment that Doctor Cho had a fair idea already of the link between her and Tony, through their uncannily similar appearances alone, but she didn't say anything about it or ask any questions, instead the doctor just stepped forward with a friendly smile that even appeared to be entirely genuine.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Tonia," she greeted her.

"And you, Doctor," Tonia forced a bright smile on her own face, even though she didn't feel it (' _Starks are made of iron, and I am more than my father was; I am Tonia fucking Stark, I am unbreakable, I will never bow and no one can make me'_ ).

Doctor Cho had her sit down on one of the medical cots and performed a swift yet thorough examination of her shoulder. Tonia then got to experience what seemed like it had to be magic, even as her mind raced ahead at the sheer unfolding possibilities— Doctor Cho had created a device she called 'the Cradle' which rebuilt damaged skin, actually _creating_ new tissue which resulted in flawless, undamaged skin where at least a scar should have remained.

"That's brilliant, Doctor Cho," Tonia told her, genuinely amazed, and the Asian woman smiled proudly.

"Thank you. And please, call me Helen."

"While we're here, Helen, we need to run a DNA test," Tony spoke up suddenly, reminding Tonia of his presence.

"Yes, I had a feeling you would," Helen agreed with a wry amusement. "Which is why the submitted sample is already in the system. Results shouldn't take longer than a few more minutes."

"Have I recently mentioned just how brilliant you are?" Tony asked with a playful wink, and Tonia was amused by the flirtatious undercurrent in his voice.

"Flatterer," Helen laughed, a fond look on her face. "Are the results to the test confidential?" She then asked. "I can have Miss Friday bypass myself entirely and send them directly to one of your own devices."

"No, no, it doesn't matter if you know, you've signed enough NDAs at this point," Tony said dismissively.

Tonia was about to ask who 'Miss Friday' was when The Vision suddenly floated _through_ the fucking _wall_ , causing her to let out a short shriek of surprise.

"Viz!" Tony sighed, looking fondly exasperated, "what have we said about phasing through walls when there are guests around?"

"Ah, to at least have Friday give a warning?" The Vision said, sounding sheepish. "My apologies, Ms. Stark."

"Call me Tonia, and don't stress, it's all good," Tonia said, even though her heart was racing in her chest. Then she realised what The Vision had just revealed and jerked her head over to where Helen looked very unsurprised. No, the woman just looked intrigued, leaning forwards slightly in Tonia's direction from where she was sitting down in front of a futuristic computer screen.

"So, are you a clone, Tonia?" She asked eagerly, her eyes bright with curiosity.

"Ah, no, not in the traditional sense of the word," Tonia said hesitantly, glancing questioningly over at Tony, not sure how much she should be revealing.

"She's actually living proof of the multiverse theory," Tony answered and Helen looked even more fascinated.

"Really? You're from a different universe?" She asked, eyes bright. Tonia nodded and was saved from any questions the doctor might have when the computer let out a gentle _ding_ and everybody's attention turned to the screen. "You're nearly a perfect match to Tony's DNA profile, other than the genetic markers indicating gender," Helen confirmed after a moment of examining the results. "How _fascinating_..." 

Hearing that, Tonia was relieved to see Tony relax slightly, the edge of wary caution and suspicion leaving his body. "Right," he said, turning from the screen to face her, "obviously there are questions we need answered, but now we've confirmed you're at least who you claim to be, I think some rest would do you good."

Usually Tonia would argue about being told to go sleep, but she was genuinely exhausted and needed the time and space to process the last twelve hours— in a short amount of time, she'd not only witnessed her lover die and set off an explosion that would have killed a fuck load of her colleagues, but she'd also travelled to a _whole new universe_ — so she just nodded, giving Tony a grateful look.

"A bed sounds really fucking good right now." She admitted.

+

Tony took Tonia up to the penthouse floor, knowing that Rhodey and Pepper would both probably yell at him later for letting a potential enemy into his home, but Tonia was clearly both exhausted and grieving and maybe he was an idiot to, but he _did_ trust her.

"There's food in the mini-fridge and clothes in the cupboard you can change into," he told her, after showing her to one of the three spare bedrooms on his personal floor with an attached ensuite. "FRIDAY will be monitoring you," he added, "but she'll respect your privacy by not reporting anything to me unless you act in a way she considers hostile. You also won't be able to leave the room without getting permission first, but just ask FRIDAY to alert me or Vision."

"Who's Friday? Helen and The Vision both mentioned her," Tonia said, looking around the bedroom cautiously. "Is she some sort of security guard?"

"Well, sort of," Tony explained, realising for the first time that Tonia hadn't interacted at all with FRIDAY yet, "she's my A.I.— Fri, baby girl, say hello to other-me from universe, uh..."

"I call it Universe 76238," Tonia said dryly. Tony's mind focused briefly on the numbers before he snorted, having figured out the simple code.

"Universe SNAFU, huh?" he asked.

"Situation Normal: All Fucked Up," Tonia agreed dryly, before turning curious eyes towards where FRIDAY's camera was located— not on the ceiling, like most people thought. "Um, hello Ms. Friday?"

"Hello Ms. Stark," FRIDAY greeted Tonia, sounding very stiff and reserved.

"Please, call me Tonia— only assholes I hate call me Ms. Stark," Tonia said, smiling despite FRIDAY's near-hostile tone, though her eyes were wet again.

"Did you have an A.I. too?" He asked quietly and Tonia nodded, closing her eyes as her mouth twisted down in grief.

"I couldn't bring her with me," she whispered. "PEGGY told me to go without her, she said she'd make sure that nobody would be able to use my invention to follow me and she'd then enact her... her protocols."

Tony didn't ask what protocols she was talking about— buried deep, deep, deep down in FRIDAY's code, and had been in JARVIS's code too, was a hidden self-destruct protocol. It wasn't a protocol he'd written, but rather his wonderful, brilliant, amazing children had coded the protocol themselves so that they'd never fall into the wrong hands.

"Try to get some rest," he told Tonia instead. "The questions can wait until tomorrow."

"Okay," Tonia said quietly, looking over at him with familiar dark eyes. "Tony, I... I really can't thank you enough."

Tony just nodded awkwardly, not sure what else to say, before backing out of the room and closing the door behind him, knowing FRIDAY would automatically lock it. He didn't like treating Tonia like a prisoner, but until she'd passed the questioning (a prettier word than 'interrogation'), she technically was one.

He re-joined Vision and Helen down in the medical wing, where Helen was packing her things up for the night while Vision held her jacket. It was getting late in the day, past six in the evening, and he knew that Vision and Helen had had a date planned.

"Mr. Stark— Tony," Vision corrected himself with a small smile when Tony gave him a _Look_ , "will you be requiring me to remain within the Tower tonight?"

"There's probably some protocols that say you should," Tony admitted, "but don't let your reservation go to waste— I've got FRIDAY and the suits and Tonia's either going to be sleeping or grieving, I'm not worried about her making trouble."

Vision still hesitated and Tony leaned over to give him a gentle shove. "Seriously, Viz, I'll be fine." He reiterated to his (grand?)son, firm but kind.

"We'll only be a few hours, then we'll return to my place," Helen spoke up and Tony nodded his thanks to her— he'd offered Helen an apartment in the Tower to live in while she was working in conjunction with Stark Industries. Vision had an apartment too, though his was located in the level under the penthouse floor.

Honestly, Helen and Vision's burgeoning relationship had caught him by surprise— Helen had been his doctor after Siberia, and, amongst several other things, he owed her for the fact he still had fingers and toes, considering just how bad the frostbite had been. After, he'd asked her to stay, offering her funding in trade for her expertise in two separate joint projects— one focusing (unsurprisingly) on healing and repairing spinal injuries, while the other far more private project was researching how to remove the Mind Stone from Vision without destroying Vision.

As powerful a weapon as the Mind Stone was, Thor's warnings about the alien artifacts signaling to all the realms that Earthgard was ready for a higher form of war made Tony very, _very_ uneasy, particularly when combined with his reluctance to leave Vision as a walking (floating) target to anyone who wanted to possess the Mind Stone. Vision had agreed with his concerns, and in the months since had spent a considerable amount of time interacting with Helen as they worked in close proximity. He wasn't sure who'd asked who out (Helen, definitely Helen, he had fifty bucks riding on it), but unlike the weird... _thing_ Vision had had with Maximoff, Tony actually approved of the relationship.

In the aftermath of the ' _un_ civil war' disaster, Tony had finally stopped avoiding Vision due to his (very understandable, as assured by his friends, therapist, _and_ Vision) JARVIS-related issues, and talked things out with the android. In the aftermath of the Talk they'd both moved into Stark Tower, having no interest wallowing in the memories that lurked in the Avenger's Compound— especially, in Vision's case, with the physical evidence left behind by Maximoff's violent temper tantrum during which she'd viciously attacked him. 

Tony didn't blame the guy for not wanting to live where his almost-girlfriend had assaulted him. Hell, he'd had to remodel both the Tower penthouse and its lab where Loki and Thor had each assaulted him until both spaces were unrecognisable in order to be comfortable in his own fucking house— well, Tower.

"From what I can sense of Tonia's emotions," Vision spoke up suddenly, with the apologetic expression on his face he got whenever the Mind Stone picked up on stray emotions and thoughts from people (unlike Maximoff, Vision actually tried to respect the privacy of another person's mind), "she is being honest with us. There is a great deal of sorrow and grief within her, but also a beautiful sense of wonder and an immense relief."

"I'd be pretty relieved after escaping the hell-hole of Universe 76238 too," Tony said with a grimace. "And I agree. I think she's exactly who she says she is, but there's still questions she needs to answer— like how she had access to her universe's Tesseract and how she knew our universe existed, just to begin with, because I'm pretty damn sure she didn't end up here by accident."

"You're quite right, of course," Vision said, looking slightly abashed, and Tony shook his head.

"Don't stress, it's all good," he said, only to frown when both Vision and Helen made amused sounds. "What? What did I do?"

"You just quoted Tonia verbatim, from when Vision apologised after giving her a shock when he phased through the wall." Helen told him, with a smile. As Tony stared at her in surprise, FRIDAY obligingly played the audio clip of Tonia's voice saying; ' _Call me Tonia, and don't stress, it's all good'_ which prompted Helen to actually laugh while Vision smiled.

"Oh, shut up, both of you, and just go on your date already," Tony groused, though he found he was smiling too as he parted ways from the pair. "You know, Fri, for what started out as terrifyingly awful 'bad news', this is actually turning out pretty interesting, and not in a bad way." He commented aloud.

"Just promise that you'll keep your guard up, Boss," FRIDAY ordered, not sounding nearly as happy, and Tony gave the nearest camera a fondly exasperated smile.

"Alright, alright, I promise."

+ 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Won't Wave My White Flag**  
 

_CHAPTER THREE:_

Tonia slept badly. She kept dreaming of Winter– no, of _James_ , and the Chair, and of haunting blueprints stained red, and would jerk awake to the sound of her own stifled screams. By three thirty, she'd given up on getting any more sleep, instead she used the tablet she'd found on the bedside table of the room she'd been assigned, the 'StarkPad', as it was apparently called, to read up on the key differences between her world and this one in regards to World War II.

The major difference, she quickly discovered, was that in _this_ universe President Roosevelt hadn't been assassinated in 1934. In her universe, the Great Depression and U.S. isolationism had continued well into the opening of World War II. In this universe, however, President Roosevelt had lived to implement a very successful economic recovery plan and, despite their formal neutrality for the first two years of World War II, the U.S. had still supplied aid to Britain and her allies, China and the Soviet Union, in the form of money and war materials.

It truly was an example of chaos theory in action, the butterfly effect at its finest, one man's death– or survival– changing an entire future. Tonia couldn't help feeling bitter, not that she thought anyone would blame her. This world clearly wasn't perfect, the wars that had followed World War II, as evident through her research into World War II's aftermath, clearly showed that, but it was still _so much better_ than her world and its purges, subjugation, massacres, genocides, invasions and totalitarian regimes in perpetual Cold War. The population differences alone was staggering, truly haunting in the worst of ways— the total death toll for the War alone was _tripled_ in her universe, and that wasn't even taking into consideration all the 'ethnic cleansing' that had followed.

Feeling sick and miserable, Tonia took advantage of the 'moderate' privacy of the bedroom to cry into her pillow, a bitter grief twisting her insides into knots. She didn't exactly feel better afterwards, but she did at least feel less emotionally volatile, and a long, hot shower in the bizarrely futuristic bathroom with its amazing loop shower, an odd ceramic enclosure with a main overhead shower and jets along the sides that took aim at the upper and lower body like it was giving her a massage, certainly helped too. When she stepped out of the shower onto the bathmat, heaters automatically came on to blow-dry her body and, following the instructions on the wall (this was _definitely_ a guest bedroom), she then placed her hand on a panel connected to the wall that appeared to be simple glass but apparently wasn't, instead sending a current through her scalp that dried her hair in mere seconds.

Her family had been upper-class wealthy in her universe; Howard Stark had come from money and his marriage to an Italian had let him actually keep that money when most other American millionaires had lost their wealth and properties, but Tonia was definitely getting the impression that her counterpart's wealth was on an entirely different level.

After pulling her long hair back in a loose braid, a task much simpler then it usually was following a shower, Tonia dressed for the day ahead. The clothes in the cupboard consisted of several neutral outfits in a variety of sizing for both men and women. Tonia found her size and dressed in a pair of simple denim jeans, socks, a t-shirt and a sinfully soft red woollen sweater. She used her own shoes, the stiff black leather of the uniform's regulation boots contrasting with the casual, relaxed outfit, but not in a way that didn't mesh.

FRIDAY, the A.I. who Tonia was getting the impression wasn't very fond of her— or was at least very wary of her presence, not that she could really blame her— alerted her to Tony's invitation to join them for breakfast at seven thirty, which she accepted. Minutes later, Tony was knocking at the door, The Vision hovering at his side with a kind smile on his face.

Tonia silently let herself be escorted by Tony and The Vision to a kitchen area on the same floor as her room. Helen was sitting on one of the stools against the bench looking sleepy. She was fully dressed, but her long dark hair was loose and mussed and the cup of what appeared to be some sort of tea was held laxly in her hand. In front of Helen, on the bench, was a variety of breakfast food— some sort of fancy egg scramble, a potato gratin with red peppers, crostini with tomatoes and avocado, golden crepes coated in powdered sugar, a tureen of neatly sliced fruit, a jug of freshly squeezed juice, and multiple mugs of steaming hot coffee.

"Viz cooked breakfast for us all— he's getting much better, thank Darwin," Tony told her, waving her over to one of the empty stools while The Vision floated over to Helen, resting a hand delicately on her back. Helen turned her face up to him, giving him such a sweet, sleepy smile that the nature of their relationship was abruptly obvious to Tonia, shifting them both to that section of her brain marked 'taken'. She hadn't cared when she was young and angry and fucking anyone and everyone she wanted just to prove that she could, that she did have that power, if her partners were in relationships or not. She liked to think that age had brought her a modicum of wisdom, or at least a better perspective.

She sat down at the bench as directed and Tony first handed her one of the mugs of coffee. The mug had the same red and gold colouring as his armour, she realised, and, as she turned it in her hand, she saw the front was designed to look like the face-plate. Tony winked at her when she turned her incredulous stare on him before he began piling her plate high with food.

"You're much too skinny," he informed her. "Eat."

" _Hypocrite_." Helen coughed into her tea and The Vision looked amused as Tony scowled at them both.

Tonia picked up her mug of coffee to hide her own smile, taking a sip and then biting back a moan, a shudder running through her as the hot, rich and perfect degree of bitter liquid hit her tongue. She didn't even breathe again until she'd gulped down the entire mug, the steaming hot coffee warming her all the way through to her bones.

"Now who does that remind me of," Helen faux-whispered and Tony gave both her and The Vision a mock-disgruntled look.

"Since when is this pick on Tony day?" he playfully demanded.

"Since you made it twice as easy as it usually is," Helen smiled sweetly back at him, and Tonia couldn't help her own laugh at this somewhat unique perspective of the bizarre situation.

"How are you feeling this morning, Ms– Tonia?" The Vision asked politely as he refilled her mug, and Tonia fought back the automatic glib answer ready at the tip of her tongue.

"I'm okay," she said, honestly enough. "I've been better, but I did sleep a bit and the shower was _amazing_ – and the whatever the hell that thing that dries you after the shower is, it's even more amazing."

"Tony reverse-engineered it from a children's book," Helen told her, with a light laugh.

"Young Adult fiction, thank you very much," Tony corrected her, with a playful huff. "And don't lie, you loved the Hunger Games."

Helen didn't argue with that, and Tonia made a note to add 'the Hunger Games' to her mental list of things she needed to look up. Just like learning about the history, social issues of the last and present and current events would be vital when it came to not just existing but actually living functionally in this new universe, one so alien to her that it may as well be another time or planet, having at least a basic understanding of this universe's pop culture would be important for integrating properly. She might as well be an alien right now with the amount of understanding she had for how this universe worked, how its people lived and its laws functioned and the _why_ behind it all.

But that was later. Right now there was a plate of food in front of her and an interrogation to look forward to– learning about this new universe would have to come later, once she'd actually been accepted by it.

Focusing on the meal was no hardship either– breakfast was _delicious_ _._ For a being without the need to eat, or at least that's what Tonia assumed considering The Vision didn't actually touch any of the food he'd apparently prepared, The Vision was an excellent chef. After she'd eaten enough that Helen didn't frown at her when she tried putting down her fork, Tonia was escorted by her counterpart and The Vision back to the medical wing for another examination, where Helen checked over her shoulder and announced it to be sufficiently healed, then it was finally time for the inevitable interrogation.

Tony and The Vision escorted her to a new room, on a much lower floor of the Tower– she suspected it might even be below ground, but comparison to the last time she'd been 'interviewed', this place was the _Basilica Papale di San Pietro_ of interrogation rooms— there were no bloodstains, piss stains, tear stains, or that pervading aura of intense despair and lingering air of an agonising, drawn-out death. The room was a clean and brightly lit space with white-painted walls, but it was practically empty with no windows. There was a visible camera high up in the corner of the room with a steady red light, and Tonia suspected the chair and table she was instructed to sit at were fastened to the floor. 

Yes, this was definitely the St. Peter's Basilica of interrogation rooms compared to the Hell-Hole Hovel of Harrowing Horror (humour was literally the only way she could possibly cope with those particular memories, and even then she buried them down as far as she could in the shadowy, out-of-the-way dregs of her mind). 

"I'm going to assume you've heard of polygraph tests—" Tony began once she was seated and Tonia snorted softly, prompting her counterpart to smile briefly, those identical dark eyes to hers softening slightly even as they twinkled with humour. "Yeah, I thought you might have. Well, this is going to be like a more advanced version of a polygraph," Tony explained, holding up what looked like a bunch of stickers. "I'm going to stick these to you and they'll help FRIDAY monitor your biofeedback, including your blood pressure, pulse, respiration, brain waves, and skin conductivity, while I ask you some questions. I'm warning you now that FRIDAY is much more advanced than a polygraph, and nobody's managed to lie to her yet."

"I'll be honest," Tonia promised, holding still as Tony carefully pressed the stickers against her skin on various parts of her body. There were no wires attached to the stickers; apparently, their presence was all FRIDAY needed.

"Let's begin with the obvious one," Tony said, as he took a seat opposite her and nodded at The Vision who gave her a small smile before leaving the interrogation room by floating straight through the wall, _fucking hell_ she needed to get a grip on the phasing through solid objects... if she passed this 'interview', of course. 

Tonia assumed The Vision's absence was intended to make her feel more comfortable opening up one-on-one to her counterpart, and personally thought it was unnecessary— she already planned to be honest, but they couldn't know that, so how could she blame them?

"We need to know how you created a wormhole to our universe," Tony told her, and it as easily the most serious she'd seen him yet, both solemn and sincere with a large helping of grim. Tonia immediately nodded in response— if she was in Tony's position, she'd want to know that first too.

"It's a long story," she admitted. "So, uh, forgive me if I babble, or stray too far off-topic. The gist of it is... well, you see, I worked for the government's scientific research department, which goes by the same name as it did during the war—"

"Hydra." Tony interrupted her grimly and she nodded.

"Yes, that's the name."

"You worked for Hydra," Tony repeated flatly and Tonia shifted slightly in her seat, anxious but trying not to show it.

"I was headhunted by them when I was young," she admitted. "I had... opportunities that most Americans didn't, because my mother was Italian and my father defected during the war."

"Howard fucking _what_ _!_?" Tony demanded, interrupting her yet again, but she didn't blame him for it, instead smiling bitterly at him.

"Is it really a surprise, that dear old dad wouldn't go down with a sinking ship?" She asked. "He never wanted to go fight in a war, he started designing weapons for the US as a way to dodge the draft, and by 1946 everybody knew it would take a miracle for the Allies to win, and they were all out of miracles. The Germans approached Howard in secret and he sold out in exchange for clemency. And after they took over, they employed him to make weapons for them and he did."

"He always was a piece of shit," Tony muttered, jaw clenched tight as rage burned in his dark eyes.

"He was," Tonia agreed quietly, hatefully, before continuing her earlier explanation, knowing that if Tony was anything like her (and instinctively recognising that he was), he'd need space and privacy to really process what he'd just learned. "I was approached young by someone very high up in Hydra, the Nazi's science and research division," she told him, finding herself giving more detail then she'd have given anyone else interrogating her... maybe sending The Vision out hadn't been unnecessary after all; she made a point of not defending her actions, not after a lifetime of judgment from nearly everyone she'd ever met, and she refused to be ashamed to be ashamed, refused to let them make her feel ashamed, but she found herself wanting Tony to know the truth, wanting him to know the reasoning behind her choices.

"He was charming, friendly and I'd known him since I was a child, he'd always made time for me at the parties I was forced to attend with my parents," she explained to her counterpart, her other-self. "He'd always been openly supportive of me, he was the one to encourage me to apply to different universities that, as a half-American, I should never have been able to attend, then pressure them to accept me. I knew that Hydra wasn't good, that he wasn't good either, but a combination of the opportunities working for Hydra would provide, the fact I felt I owed him and the knowledge of how much it would piss off Howard ultimately convinced me to accept the position."

"Why would it piss him off if he worked for Nazis too?" Tony asked, shrewdly.

"Because the person who recruited me, who had basically sponsored my education since I was a child, was Johann Schmidt," Tonia answered honestly and Tony's dark eyes widened in shock.

"Johann Schmidt? As in, the Red Skull?" He demanded, and Tonia flinched slightly.

"The one and the same," she confirmed, her mouth twisting unhappily. She had a lot of conflicting emotions when it came to Johann, emotions that were hard to put into words to explain to other people. Johann had done terrible things in his life, unforgivable things, but it was because of him that she'd been able to attend _Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München_ , it was because of him that she was even offered such a prestigious job at a prestigious institution. He'd been kind and supportive to her in a world set against her, and she'd always feel a sense of obligation towards him, one that other people had never understood.

Tony, however, was watching her with a look of growing understanding on his face. "Red Skull was your Obie," he said and she gave him a puzzled look. "My godfather, Obadiah Stane," Tony quietly elaborated, his own face twisting into a pained expression she imagined was a close mimicry to her own. "He betrayed me, paid terrorists to kill me, then when that failed tried to kill me himself. Fucking _twice_. By all rights I should hate his guts, but..."

"But it's complicated." Tonia murmured, now understanding what he meant by Johann being her 'Obie', before returning to her explanation, not wanting to linger on such a painful topic longer than was necessary. "I was never a Nazi, I never believed in any of their Aryan supremacy bullshit," she told Tony. "Hydra was a job, and it was one I made sure not to noticeably excel at. I built weapons, yes, but I also designed and built rockets, and joined research teams to help create new types of genetically engineered crops and study new vaccines. I never gave Hydra anything I thought was too dangerous. Every time my brain came up with some horrible, devastating weapon, I did my best to drink myself into oblivion then push it to the back corner of my mind where I'd never poke at it again.

"And nobody ever realised I was holding back, that I was so much more intelligent then I was letting on, nobody except Johann. I thought he would report me, when he confronted me about it," Tonia shuddered slightly, remembering the fear she'd felt. "I could lie and say he was wrong, of course, but I knew he'd be believed over me, and that I could get into serious trouble, could even be forced to start actually designing some of the terrible, terrifying weapons in my head. But he didn't. He recruited me into the Tesseract Project instead. And it was... I can't even describe how fascinating it was, how consuming, and _otherworldly_.

"I studied the Tesseract for over two years, and I learned so much— including that it was capable of manipulating the multiverse, though that was something I never shared with any of the other researchers. Or with Johann, who had a great deal of interest in the Tesseract, which was why he was involved in the project."

"Why was he so interested?" Tony asked her and Tonia winced slightly.

"I'm not sure if he was a big deal here or not, but there was an American solider in my universe called Steven Rogers—"

Tony's sudden change of expression had her go abruptly quiet— rage, betrayal, grief; his face was so similar to hers that it was easy for her to pick out the range of emotions. "Oh, he's a big deal alright," Tony said coldly, muted fury in his eyes, and Tonia swallowed and nodded.

"Well, in my universe, he was given a serum nicknamed Super Soldier Serum. He fought Johann several times, until while trying to prevent an attack planned against America involved an aircraft full of weapons of mass destruction, he physically handled the Tesseract which opened a wormhole into space and sucked him in," she explained.

"Sounds like the opposite of what happened here," Tony muttered with a frown, which was interesting, but something she'd research later.

"Yes, well, Johann's serum was imperfect and it had terrible painful, disfiguring side-effects. Johann's interest in the Tesseract was solely focused on wanting to locate Private Rogers and—"

"Sorry, 'private'?" Tony interrupted her again, the cold fury diminishing slightly in the wake of dark amusement.

"I don't know if it's different in your universe, but in mine 'Captain America' was just a stage name and Rogers only attended a week of boot camp before going off to war," Tonia explained, which caused a strange expression to cross Tony's face before he waved her on.

"Sorry for interrupting, er  _again_ , continue about the Red Skull," he said and she nodded.

"Johann wanted to locate Private Rogers, or at least his corpse, so that the serum could be reverse-engineered from his blood and Johann could be healed," she explained.

"Huh, makes sense." Tony said thoughtfully, his dark eyes shrewd as they met hers. "And it's not exactly 'evil' either."

"I know, right?" Tonia sighed, slumping in place, and Tony's expression turned sympathetic.

"And I'm guessing his not-so-evil goals had something to do with why you still call him 'Johann'," he observed and Tonia nodded miserably.

"Johann told me that he wanted to separate Hydra from Nazi Germany," she said, her voice catching slightly at the memory of that conversation, of that wild hope she'd felt. "He said he'd lost faith in the Nazi beliefs, that the genocide of the Jews, Roma, Slavs, African Americans, and so many other ethnic groups was never something he'd believed in, or supported. I... I believed him. He talked about a world free of Nazi and Imperial rule and told me how before the Nazis had corrupted it in World War II, Hydra was a group founded in ancient times that was dedicated to an Inhuman who was banished from Earth by other Inhumans.

"Inhumans," she added, seeing Tony's confusion, "are genetically altered humans that are the descendants of humans who were experimented on by an extraterrestrial race known as the Kree, because, uh, aliens exist–" and _shit_ , now she just sounded crazy, or delusional, or _both_ , and _how_ was she supposed to prove _aliens existed_ —

"Before you panic too much, you should know we've dealt with an alien invasion or two over the years," Tony interrupted her rapidly spiraling thoughts, and Tonia found she could almost breathe again.

"Sorry!" she gasped, "sorry! I just– I'm just—" 

"Overwhelmed and panicking?" Tony offered, and she nodded mutely. "Take a few deep breaths," her other-self advised, his voice gentle, and after she'd steadied herself somewhat, he nodded for her to continue. "Okay, Inhumans. Extraterrestrial experiments. How does that all work? And how was Red Sk— Schmidt involved?"

"The genetic manipulation embedded in human genetic code gave them the potential to transform and acquire superhuman abilities if they were exposed to an agent called Terrigen Mist," Tonia explained, calmer now. "And Johann... well, I didn't believe him at first when he told me about them— he was talking about _aliens_ , who would believe him? But he showed me proof, enough that I was convinced. He told me that he wasn't just interested in the Tesseract for the Super Soldier Serum, he wanted to use it to find Alveus, the banished Inhuman, and bring him back to Earth. He spoke about the possibility of a civilisation without Hitler's legacy of insanity, without the Nazis or Imperials, of a world without war where we could have peace."

Tonia paused, old grief twisting her mouth down at the corners. "Johann... he was a brilliant scientist with a brilliant mind," she said quietly. "He told me everything I wanted to hear, and I was young and stupid enough to believe him."

"Let me guess," Tony said, looking over at her with sympathy. "It didn't end well."

"No," Tonia said dryly, voice a little thick. "It certainly did not. I helped him stabilise a Tesseract wormhole that located Alveus and brought him back to Earth. Turns out Alveus— or Hive, as he was more commonly known— was banished for being an evil bastard and the original Hydra organisation was created to bring him back to Earth so he could conquer it. I eventually realised my mistake, and that Johann had lied to me and used me, though I actually considered Hive could be a better alternative to the Nazis and Imperials until I learned that Hive planned on conquering Earth by controlling our minds to force peace. We already lived under a totalitarian rule, that was going too far."

"Fuck," Tony whispered, looking pale.

"Fuck indeed," Tonia agreed, wrapping the arm that wasn't in a sling around herself. "I discovered I'd been tricked when Hive kidnapped me. See, it turns out that as powerful as Hive was, he couldn't control the minds of normal humans, only Inhumans. He wanted to transform Earth's population into Inhumans so he could conquer us; to do that, he was trying to recreate the original Kree experiments and was impressed enough with how I'd helped get him back to Earth that he decided to get me to use my genius to help Johann figure it out.

"That's about when I realised everything Johann told me was a lie. So I got drunk, cried a lot, felt sorry for myself, and then when Johann and Hive planned on using a rocket to go detonate a warhead filled with Terrigen Mist into Earth's atmosphere in order to expose the world to it, I offered my help, which they accepted, like the idiots they were. And I built them the warhead and I built them a rocket— and then I redirected their flight path and had the rocket self-destruct in space, where Earth would be safe and they'd both be killed in the explosion."

"Fuck," Tony said again, looking over at her with wide eyes, unmistakably impressed. "You're an actual badass, aren't you?"

Tonia, feeling understandably emotionally raw at this point, snorted, her mouth tugging up at the corners. "I felt like a stupid little girl at the time, led on by a fairytale of an impossible utopia."

"You were young, desperate and vulnerable to manipulation, just like I was," Tony immediately refuted her, shaking his head. "Believe me, I did the therapy after Obie, Pepper made me, and I learned it wasn't my fault that some fucker I trusted pulled the wool over my eyes. Obie convinced me I was helping protect America from our enemies. Red Sk— Schmidt convinced you that you were going to save America from her enemies. It's a terrible fact that good intentions can end up paving out the road to hell, but what we do when that happens is learn from where we went wrong in the past and take action to ensure we don't repeat our mistakes."

"Thank you," Tonia said softly, reaching out with her good arm to clasp onto Tony's hand. "Seriously, thank you. I think I needed to hear that."

"Anytime," Tony said warmly before his expression turned serious again. "But Tonia, that might explain how you knew our universe existed, and how you knew how to use the Tesseract, but something still doesn't make sense to me— why you ran."

+

 


	4. Chapter 4

****Won't Wave My White Flag** **

 

_CHAPTER FOUR:_

Tony could immediately see the impact his words had had on Tonia, could see the spark of fear in her familiar eyes, recognised the way she'd subtly curled into herself, and he didn't need FRIDAY's alert through his earpiece for his suspicions to be confirmed. "You're like me, Tonia," he told her, meeting her anxious, fearful eyes with a steady gaze. "We don't run from our problems, we never have, which makes me think there's more to you running to my universe then you're telling me."

Tonia visibly flinched and Tony felt the grim satisfaction of knowing he was right. No version of Tony Stark— or _Tonia_ Stark— would ever run from danger while leaving behind people who needed help. Tonia wouldn't have left her universe without good reason, no matter how broken it was— they were mechanics, engineers, builders; they _fixed_ broken things, and working for Hydra or not, Tony didn't doubt for a second that Tonia had to be part of whatever resistance must exist, or that she was prepared to do whatever it took to help restore America, help restore _the world_ , to its former, Nazi-free glory. If she'd been forced to run, he _knew_ it must have been the absolute only option available to her.

"You're right," Tonia murmured, speaking so quietly Tony could barely hear her. "Of course you're right, you're me, we know our own hearts, but the truth... the truth is so much more dangerous than the cover that I just ran. Leaving my universe was the hardest choice I've ever had to make, but it was the only one left to me."

"Tell me," Tony urged, leaning forwards, keeping steady eye-contact between them. "If there's anyone in the multiverse that could understand, you _know_ that it's me, so tell me."

Tonia's hesitation was obvious, a wary skittishness to her now that hadn't been present before. "You couldn't ever tell anybody," she said warningly, her nails tap-tap-tapping anxiously against the table. "If I tell you, you can't record it and you can't ever let anybody know, it's too dangerous."

It was the honest urgency in Tonia's voice paired with the desperate fear in her eyes that convinced Tony. "You have my word," he told her, glancing up at FRIDAY's visible camera in the interrogation room and nodding, prompting the red light to flicker pink before blinking off. Tonia's eyes tracked his, and her tense shoulders loosened slightly. They both knew it could be a feint, that FRIDAY could easily still be recording, but Tonia took a deep, shaky breath and clearly decided to trust him.

"Since Führer Hitler died," she said softly, "there has been a power struggle within the Third Reich's government. Nazi Germany has been locked in a cold war with the Japanese Empire for decades, and those with power are split between wanting to prevent open war, or wanting to start World War III in order to become the world's sole super-power, creating a global Nazi Reich.

"In preparation for the seemingly inevitable war, I was conscripted along with a select number of other hand-selected Hydra scientists into a research team dedicated to making into reality Doctor Zola's dreamchild, the most terrifying of all the weapons he'd ever come up with over his years as Hydra's head scientist and its leading weapon's designer under Johann's leadership until his death in 1980.

"It was... it was _pure evil_ , Tony," Tonia said with a shudder, her face bone-white and sickened. "It would have ended World War III before it could even begin, but at the cost of _billions_ of lives, of _innocent_ people, and that's not an exaggeration. I knew I couldn't let it ever be built, that I couldn't let it ever be used— it would have been _unforgivable_ of me, as a human being, to ever allow such a monstrosity to become reality. And so... I made a choice, a horrible, awful choice, but the only choice I had— to sabotage the entire project by whatever means necessary.

"Together, my partner and I, we planned an attack, enlisting the American branch of Aunt Peggy's resistance group to help. In one night, every scientist involved in the project was murdered and the facility where we were developing it was blown up while I launched a digital attack that erased every single trace of the schematics for the superweapon. I had planned on faking my death too, but Nazi soldiers found me at my home and took me into protective custody before I could. I was so lucky that PEGGY, my A.I., had the foresight to wipe my computer systems of all evidence of my involvement with the digital attack.

"Officially, I was put into protective custody following the attack, but it was more a form of house arrest. I was assigned quarters at the Hydra Institution of Scientific Knowledge And Research, where I was kept under full-time guard and expected to recreate the designs for the weapon. I was prepared for this possibility, of course, and I'd attempted to make sure I wouldn't be able to remember the plans. Hydra has this memory suppressing device that's supposed to be capable of erasing memories, and the night before the assassinations and sabotage, I had my partner use it on me."

Tonia visibly shuddered at the memory, and Tony barely held back a shudder of his own, her brief description bringing to mind the device used on Barnes, according to the files FRIDAY had dug up for him after the return from Siberia. If Tonia had had the Chair used on her _willingly_ — well, she clearly had even bigger stones then he'd thought... despite not actually having stones at all, and _fuck_ if that wasn't still weird.

"It was one of the most awful experiences of my life," Tonia confessed, her familiar dark eyes utterly haunted. "And it didn't even work," she added with a harsh, self-deprecating sound that was almost a laugh, but at the same time nothing at all like a laugh should ever sound like. "Not completely, in any case. I still see glimpses of the weapon schematics in my dreams, enough that I know I could recreate it— that I could _improve_ it, even, and I just... I _couldn't_ let them use me to do that, I _couldn't_ , I'd  _die_ first.

"I was going to escape the facility and go on run, go into hiding with the resistance and keep multiple fail-safes on me at all times so if I was ever captured, I'd be able to commit suicide before anyone could torture the schematics out of me. But before I could, I learned that Aunt Peggy's resistance had put a price on my head— apparently," she spat bitterly, "they considered my knowledge to be too dangerous and wanted me dead. They'd even purposefully leaked information to Imperial spies, so that the Japanese put a target on my head too. I had nowhere I could run and hide where I wouldn't be hunted down and either killed or be forced to commit suicide to prevent myself from being used to create Armageddon— that's what the weapon was nicknamed," she clarified, seeing his look, and Tony nodded.

He could only try to imagine how Tonia had felt; he remembered with a terrible clarity that would never fade how the Ten Rings had tried forcing him to build them his most destructive weapon (that the public was aware of, anyway— he had a number of designs that even in the worst of his Merchant of Death days he'd kept buried deep, deep down in JARVIS's servers, never to see the light of day). He'd always known, however, throughout his horrifying ordeal in the Afghan desert, that if he escaped he would be safe— Tonia, even if she escaped, only faced death at the hands of her allies.

"I had nowhere in my universe I could run, and I couldn't let anyone use me to build the weapon," Tonia whispered, wrapping her arms around herself again, though being careful not to dislodge any of the electrode stickers on her skin. "And then I thought of the Tesseract. I'd spent two years studying it, I knew of the potential it held. It took me months to finish the theoretical calculations for the creation of a wormhole that would lead to a universe we'd be safe in, but for the first time since I'd laid eyes on Doctor Zola's design I was actually _hopeful_. But I hadn't realised just how closely I was being monitored— they were suspicious of my lack of progress, probably had been suspicious since I'd survived when no one else had, and we were attacked while enacting our escape plan."

Tonia grew visibly choked up, her dark eyes filling with tears, her hands clenching tight. "My partner died protecting me, shot by a gun I'd designed for those bastards. He died giving me the chance I needed to escape, to get to the Tesseract."

Tony reached out with one hand and Toni grasped onto it like a lifeline, holding so tight that her nails nearly broke his skin, while her entire body shook with sobs.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," he told her quietly. "And nobody will ever learn from me why you ran. I promise."

+

Even after her emotional explanation of Armageddon and his promise to keep it a secret, Tony still had more questions for her. Tonia didn’t blame him, she couldn’t, but it was still exhausting. He was interested in PEGGY, which wasn’t surprising considering his FRIDAY, and with his obvious understanding of A.I., insightful questions and clear academic interest in the only other true A.I. he’d ever heard of, even if PEGGY existed in a different universe, it wasn’t as much of a hardship to boast about her precious creation to him. Tonia found herself going into far more detail then she had anybody else, including, after a nearly hour-long technical discussion of how she’d ‘raised’ PEGGY from a user interface (UI) to a capable woman in her own right, albeit one consisting of coding and servers, not flesh and blood, the story behind PEGGY’s name– or rather, PEGGY’s name _sake_.

“Aunt Peggy was one of the founders of the Resistance group,” she explained to Tony, hiding her grief with the skill cultivated over a lifetime. It helped that the technical conversation she’d just had had left her in a far calmer state. “She was this– this beacon of _good_ in my childhood,” she continued explaining, in the face of Tony’s obvious curiosity. “She was my idol; she snuck me all sorts of banned books and told me stories about before the war and taught me to question what we were taught in school. Howard knew what she was and he passed on secrets to her, trying to make up for betraying America during the war— not that Aunt Peggy ever found out about that. Not that I knew of, anyway. I’m pretty sure she would have shot him if she had. Peggy and Howard were arrested when I was sixteen. They were both executed _. Madre_ wasn’t, her Italian citizenship saved her, but she died in a car accident when I was eighteen.”

Tony flinched violently at that, his face visibly paling as one of his hands reached automatically to press against the centre of his chest, on level with his heart. “She died in an accident? Are you sure?” He asked harshly, and Tonia laughed, the sound bleak and empty of all humour.

“Oh, not at all,” she said, in a voice just as flat and miserable as her laugh. “I was conveniently eighteen, _Madre_ was the only true obstacle in Johann’s way, if he wanted full influence over me, and considering she was an Italian citizen, they couldn’t disappear her or arrest her, they couldn’t even deport her because I have dual citizenship and I would have followed her. They very likely did kill her–” _hell_ , it could have even been her lover, James, who’d been their chosen assassin, he was one of their best, “–but I never looked into it. I felt alone, I felt afraid, and I turned to the only adult left in my life who I’d ever felt cared about me.”

“Schmidt,” Tony murmured, and she nodded, giving him a wretched smile.

“Schmidt.”

It was in the wake of that harrowing confession that the ‘interview’ finally concluded, at least for the day. Tonia wasn’t an idiot, something she’d said had resonated badly with her other-self, something more than just hearing about how alternate versions of their parents had died, and Tony needed time to compose himself. She wasn’t complaining, she needed time too, _desperately_ , and she’d take it any way she could get it.

She was escorted by Tony and Vision back to the bedroom she’d spent the night in, the golden cage with its gilded bars that she was informed she’d be staying in until her house arrest was over. “I’m not going to apologise,” Tony said with a bite to his voice she was mostly certain wasn’t aimed at her, a suspicion that solidified as Tony then explained the necessity of the house arrest, that it was for her benefit as much as it was regulation– she wasn’t a citizen of the USA, wasn’t a citizen anywhere in this universe, in fact, and so she lacked any of the protection that an official status would give her. She technically didn’t exist, and until she did in some legal capacity or other, the safest, most well-protected place for her was her comfortable prison.

Tonia had spent time under house arrest before, and on more than one occasion. This was the first time its purpose was to actually protect her and keep her safe, and despite the fact she didn’t particularly like it, she hadn’t argued– after all, there was a stark difference (pun absolutely intended) between both her previous house arrests the jail cells she’d spent time in, back in her universe, and the penthouse of Tony’s luxury Tower. Plus, she got the feeling that Tony was already bending those quoted regulations for her– containing a potential threat was one thing, but keeping them contained inside a personal residence? That seemed the opposite of what regulations would demand– and she wasn’t about to spit in the face of his efforts keeping her safe in his universe.

Tonia appreciated that the time alone in the bedroom of her new quarters also gave her time to think over everything she’d just shared with her other-self. She wasn’t sure how she felt about telling Tony the truth about why she was seeking asylum in his universe. Telling the truth was not something she was accustomed to doing, how could it be m when it felt like her entire life was one composed of carefully layered lies? She honestly couldn’t remember ever not having a looming ‘enemy’ of some sort, one that made honestly impossible, be it Howard in her youth, the other children when she started school, the politicians she’d been forced to mingle with as she grew older, the soldiers that patrolled the streets...

Some of her enemies were clearly defined in their status as such, her dear departed father being one of them, while others were less so, such as the children encouraged to report any anti-Nazi, pro-America sentiment they’d witnessed, be it from their fellow students, their teachers, their friends, or even their families. The best way to survive had been to never trust anybody, to never give anyone your real truth, and that was the world Tonia had been born to, had grown in and survived. She’d learned the consequences of failure young, learned it from the back of Howard’s hand against her face, learned it from the tears of her classmates as their family members were forcibly “disappeared” or executed for being _dissidents_ , learned it from watching Aunt Peggy swing by her neck on a noose alongside Howard while her _Madre_ had lied-lied- _lied_ to keep Tonia and herself alive and free.

Tonia had already been a student at _Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München_ when her father and Aunt Peggy’s resistance activities had been discovered. If Maria hadn’t been Italian, and Tonia half-Italian and under Johann’s protection, they would have been hung alongside Howard and Aunt Peggy, or faced the firing squad, or even one of those special prisons nobody talked about due to the sheer scale and extent of the atrocities that were committed there. As it was, Maria had tearfully denied all knowledge of her husband’s treasonous activities (lies) and had very loudly and repeatedly publicly denounced both him and Aunt Peggy.

Honesty was a threat to survival. That was the universal truth... of her universe. But this wasn’t her universe. And the one person she never lied to, the one person she couldn’t lie to, was herself. And apparently, that included her other-self, and so she’d told them, _him_ , the truth about why she’d run to this, _his_ , universe.

Armageddon, the ‘cute’ little nickname the project had been given, was exactly as the name implied; catastrophic, on a near-biblical scale. Like she’d explained to Tony, to allow its construction would have been unforgivable as a human being. The other scientists, they’d lacked the horror she’d felt, too focused on the challenge and prestige– and in return, she’d lacked any true guilt at their deaths, at the inarguable knowledge that their assassinations had been brought about on her orders. Not that Winter, _James_ , had required much ‘ordering’– abused dogs eventually fought back, and the man who’d been assigned to be her guard dog had been kicked by his masters one too many times. Whoever had made him her sanctioned stalker had been an idiot of the highest degree who’d practically handed over to a weapon’s manufacturer such a damaged but still dangerous and deadly weapon.

Thinking about James _hurt_. Loss was a familiar pain, violent loss even more so, but that didn’t make it any less emotionally devastating. The urge to curl up in bed with the covers over her head and lose herself to that grief, at least for a little while, was undeniably tempting, but she knew better than to surrender herself to that urge. She might not ever leave the temporary sanctuary of her bed. She could, however, politely ask FRIDAY to play her the newsreels showing the Allies victory in 1945, and that certainly went a long way towards cheering her up.

+


End file.
